Bridging the Gap

One question that came up in previous class discussions was how to connect the services and work provided by youth centers to schools. The Speakers Bureau offers a response to how programs can bridge that gap and be better integrated into teachers' and students' understanding, the cirriculum, etc. The Speakers Bureau gave youth an opportunity to engage in outreach and share their experiences as members of the LGBTQ community, as well as opportunities to work directly with teachers, exploring how literature can be used to question heteronormativity. It would be interesting to see how this outreach model could be modified for other topics like race, class and privilege. Connecting it back to last Thursday's conversation, I wonder how far a partnership between a community organization and a school could go in changing the canon of a school's cirriculum.